Chapter 1 After Waking Up

After waking up, Bai Yingying said she would make a cup of tea for Zhou Ze, but Zhou Ze refused. Instead, he had Bai Yingying get him three large glasses of purified water, which he gulped down. Only then did he feel a little more at ease.

The feeling of being roasted in the dream earlier was truly unbearable. Even after waking up now, he still felt a lingering fear, like he had just come out of a swimming pool after playing all afternoon. You couldn't even control your own balance, and your steps felt unsteady.

The little loli had been sitting by Zhou Ze's bed, not leaving, like a loyal hunting dog, always ready.

Zhou Ze could even see an undisguised greed in her eyes.

"Check your ghost messenger certificate," the little loli reminded him. "There should be the latest wanted list on it."

Zhou Ze reached out to support his forehead, hesitated for a moment, and then used his other hand to open the ghost messenger certificate. The first few pages hadn't changed, but two miniature wanted posters had appeared in the back.

They contained the targets’ photos, life stories, and even their current locations.

One man and one woman.

The man was in Rugao.

The woman was in Tongzhou.

Both were within the Tongcheng area; after all, Tongcheng governed six counties and one city.

Zhou Ze lit a cigarette. Honestly, he didn't feel much about the wanted posters. He still felt dizzy, mainly because of that whip. Even in the dream, it felt so real.

Aside from the final damage,

the foreplay and build-up were all so realistic.

"Let's get ready to go catch them. They're big fish, free merits! If we scatter them on the spot and let them be annihilated, one is worth the merit of sending ten wandering souls to Hell. If we capture them alive and send them back to Hell through the Gates of Hell, one is worth twenty!"

"Your current merit points are over three hundred per mille."

"That means if you catch seven or eight escaped fugitives like these, you'll have enough merit to be promoted to Captain. Then, like last time when you forced that one in Changzhou, you can go around and grab a few more ghost messengers as your subordinates, and you can officially become a Captain."

The little loli was very much like a virtuous wife,

planning out a blueprint and future development direction for her good-for-nothing husband as much as possible,

really racking her brains.

But Zhou Ze didn't seem to care much about the so-called merit points, at least not from his expression.

He just frowned and asked,

"How did these prisoners escape?"

Yes,

Zhou Ze was very curious.

How were these prisoners able to escape?

Didn't Hell have the Ten Yama Kings and the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva?

And countless hell soldiers and a massive Underworld suppressing it, how could anyone escape?

"We don't need to worry too much about things like this. We can't understand it at our level. But if you really want to know, I can tell you about it."

"Hell isn't a monolithic entity; there are various factions within it, engaging in intrigue and both overt and covert struggles. In fact, every riot and every escape of evil ghosts from Hell cannot be separated from the intervention of some faction above."

"Yin and Yang are divided into two paths, but it's like how the emperors in the human world always dreamed of being able to reign in Hell even after their deaths, so they built massive mausoleums with terracotta warriors or even human sacrifices, waiting to kill their way into Hell together."

"The giants of Hell have also never given up on infiltrating the human world. Among these evil ghosts, there may even be one or two who are pawns in the hands of some big shot. But it would be too ugly for them to release people individually, so they often create a riot-like situation, allowing one or two of their pawns to hide among them and send them back to the Yang world."

"Most of the escaped evil ghosts are targets that we ghost messengers need to capture. The supporting cast who run alongside them become the supplements for our ghost messengers to advance."

"But you also know that the one or two with protection aren't so easy to catch. They're even more terrifying in strength than we ghost messengers. Of course, if we catch them and send them down, the rewards will be even greater, although we'll offend some big shot, but the Underworld has its own independent regulations."

"It's still a bit difficult to understand."

"For example, the one who killed so many of our ghost messengers in Rongcheng last time," the little loli looked at Zhou Ze, "Heh heh, I think he might be a special one among the evil ghosts who escaped during the riot a few years ago."

"If you have the chance to see the true appearance of his soul, it will definitely be very, very miserable, basically tortured beyond recognition."

"Including that woman named Tang Shi, the true appearance of her soul certainly won't be as flirty as she is in her current body, and she likes to wear stockings and short skirts."

The little loli unconsciously started to badmouth the beautiful women around Zhou Ze.

Just imagine, many men have erectile dysfunction with artificial beauties. If they knew that a completely tortured soul was hidden beneath this body, then the dysfunction would definitely be even greater.

And for Zhou Ze, it would be like adding another obstacle on top of an obstacle.

"What about me?" Zhou Ze pointed at himself.

"You're a special case. The crazy one wanted to play a game of substituting one thing for another to please his sister, but you yourself are different. It's still unknown who was playing who in that matter."

"And you don't belong to the category of evil ghosts; you just grazed the outside and came back, you didn't go inside."

Zhou Ze reached out and rubbed the little loli's head.

The little loli smiled foolishly at him.

At this moment,

this scene,

was like a pair of foolish father and daughter, sitting together and comforting each other about the hardships of life.

"If you want to prevent the one inside you from replacing you, the best way is to climb up step by step, constantly obtaining titles from the Underworld, and use the Underworld's edicts and your identity to suppress him in reverse!"

The little loli felt so tired,

so tired,

it was really, really difficult to motivate a salted fish to have any initiative.

"For example, your ghost messenger certificate is completely different from others'. Mine can't compare to yours at all. This is your opportunity!"

The little loli pointed at Zhou Ze's ghost messenger certificate and said very seriously.

To put it bluntly, what the little loli meant was that what was in front of you, Zhou Ze, was never a wide, open road, but a single-plank bridge with no way back. You can only move forward along this path, otherwise, the time when you'll be completely replaced is really not far away.

Zhou Ze took another sip of water, stood up, stretched, and said,

"Then let's go catch the one in Tongzhou first. It's a woman. In her previous life, she was a drug dealer who was executed. The ghost messenger certificate now marks her location in Shigang Town, Tongzhou District. How did this marking come about?"

"The Underworld's eyes are far more numerous than you or I can imagine. As long as she doesn't have a special way to deliberately hide her tracks, we can know where she is. And when we get to that town, we'll have an even more specific sense."

"Then let's go catch her first." Zhou Ze thought for a moment, then said, "So many evil ghosts, only two in Tongcheng?"

"After you've caught the ones here in Tongcheng, you can go to other places to catch them. Didn't you just take in a little brother in Changzhou? You can go help him out."

"Oh, right, this time when you capture evil ghosts, even if you send them down, as long as I help, I can get a little bit of the merit."

The little loli was just explaining why she was so active.

As the two walked down the stairs, the first thing Zhou Ze saw was Xu Qinglang lying on the sofa with a mask on his face.

Zhou Ze was stunned for a moment,

then a smile appeared on the corner of his mouth. He walked over directly and punched Xu Qinglang in the chest.

"Crap!"

Xu Qinglang clutched his chest and fell directly off the sofa. He peeled off the mask on his face and looked at Zhou Ze in confusion.

"I just woke up, I'm weak."

"It's good that you're awake." Zhou Ze sat down on the sofa. "We're going out later, make food."

"..." Xu Qinglang.

Although he was very unhappy with this treatment, Lao Xu still went upstairs to the kitchen to cook. For someone who was good at cooking, making delicious food for the people around him to taste was something he enjoyed.

And Xu Qinglang also understood that his coma had caused a lot of trouble for the people around him. Sometimes he could sense that Zhou Ze was giving him careful physical examinations every day.

After Xu Qinglang went upstairs,

Zhou Ze asked the old Taoist next to him,

"How did he wake up?"

"The house prices fell, scared him awake to sell."

"Heh heh."

Zhou Ze shook his head, looking unconvinced.

Now,

houses,

what did they matter?

At this time, the news was playing on the large TV on the first floor. France defeated Croatia in the World Cup final and won the大力神杯(Dali Shen Bei, Hercules Trophy).

Then,

the news footage changed, as if it was an interview with some archaeological excavation workers in the wild. It seemed that a new ancient tomb had been unearthed, and there should be a lot of cultural relics inside.

You could tell from the uncontrollable smile on the worker's face.

"Another ancient tomb excavated?" Zhou Ze asked.

"Yeah." The old Taoist frowned, subconsciously placed a cup of tea in front of Zhou Ze, and then decisively moved away.

"Heh heh, speaking of ancient tombs, by the way, Old Taoist, where did you put the land deity's gold and silver coins?"

Zhou Ze asked as he picked up the teacup in front of him and took a small sip.

Money,

was finally no longer a problem.

So many gold and silver coins,

even if he didn't buy a house, so many precious metals at home were definitely hard currency, and there was no problem resisting inflation.

Most importantly,

Zhou Ze had always dreamed of being able to lie on his own pile of gold and silver coins like Old Grandet, criticizing the sinful capitalist stench.

"This..."

"What's wrong?"

"It's there."

The old Taoist timidly pointed at the TV,

"I was in a hurry to leave at the time, and someone else came. This poor Taoist didn't have time to take it. Officer Zhang next to him said that these were all cultural relics and needed to be handed over to the state."

"Crack!!!"

Zhou Ze still had a faint smile on his face,

but the teacup in his hand was directly crushed by him.

The blood on his fingers dripped down along with the fragments of the teacup,

as if his heart,

was also bleeding...